


takes a village

by deniigiq



Series: Dumpster Fires Verse [30]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Carnival, Family, Family Drama, Gen, Matt is secretly a plant, Parents, Puppies, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Red, Team as Family, he lays out on rocks and picnic tables to absorb sunlight to heat his soul, this is a PSA to adopt your pets from your local shelter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 09:50:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18118361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “She’s his mom?? Like, how does a nun become a mom?” MJ asked. Foggy shushed her firmly.“We are not talking about this, we have never talked about this, we will never talk about this again, and most importantly, we are never, never, never telling Matt that you know anything about anything. Yes?”MJ stared at him.“Okay, but only if you give us the dirt,” she negotiated.(Team Spidey volunteers to help out at Clinton Church's annual street carnival and learns who Sister Maggie really is. Peter has some feelings.)





	takes a village

**Author's Note:**

> took a poll on tumblr over some of the less-polished works for my verses which people were interested in seeing. This is 1 of 4 that will go up. 
> 
> Anyways, it's not as nuanced and artistic or whatever as most of the others in the series, but I'm at the point where I don't care as much about that. Let's just have some tricky conversations!!

**DD: [voice message]** Hey Pete, I know this is really last minute, but are you or your friends free on Saturday to potentially dog-sit like thirty puppies? My church is partnering with the SPCA for an event and we have some scheduling gaps we’re trying to fill.

 

What the actual fuck kind of question was that?

Peter was, and he could not emphasize this enough, _always_ available to dog-sit thirty puppies. Further, he was available to dog-sit _sixty_ puppies with two days-notice. And MJ and Ned, even if they thought they were not available, would certainly become available for the event as well, he’d make sure of that.

 

 **SM:** I would literally murder a man for this opportunity. Yes, please and thank you. I will bring the cavalry. Where is this happening?

 **DD:** that was fast

 **DD:** Clinton Church, you know where that is?

 **DP:** wait are we going to fucking church?

 **DP:** I can’t I’ll burn

 **SM:** what time

 **DP:** guys

 **DP:** guys no imma burn

 **DD: [voice message]** We need volunteers there at eight, which I get is kind of early, since you’re coming from Queens. If you want, you and friends can stay at my place the night before, I’m maybe two streets over. And apparently my sofa has been a fold-out thing this whole time? Who knew?

 

Given that Matt spent most of his time bleeding out and/or otherwise dying on that sofa, it wasn’t surprising that he’d never bothered to dig around it.

 

 **SM:** I will ask May and my people. If not, I will wake up at the crack of dawn.

 **DD: [voice message]** cool. We’ve got shirts for you guys. Let me know who else can make it, and I’ll pass it on to our folks.

 

Peter rallied the troops. The troops were grumpy as hell about waking up at ass o’clock on a Saturday, but were appropriately enticed by the chance to hold puppies all day long. Half of the troops wondered if this whole deal could not be turned into an AcaDec project.

 

 **SM:** MJ wants to know if our AcaDec team can all come to volunteer. She’s saying something about community work and college apps.

 **DD:** oh

 **DD:** I mean, sure. It’s kind of short notice, though, so don’t feel obligated to do anything formal.

 **SM:** oh no.

 **SM:** trust me, I got this

 

 

The opportunity to hold, cherish, and love small animals for an _entire day_ was too much for most of the team to resist, even though Mr. Harrison said that it was a little too late to print permission slips and call it anything formal.

“If you all want to take a banner or something, I’m sure that’s fine,” he suggested, “But you’ll need to ask before you put it up anywhere.”

That was basically permission.

 

 

Matt was in casual clothes when he opened the door to let Peter and MJ and Ned duck under his arm into the living room that Friday night.

He had no useful information.

He knew nothing about dog types. Or cat types. Or whether they were all good boys and girls and puppies.

“Kid, this is all new to me,” he groused, pretending not to be amused by the sudden campsite in his living room, “I usually just go do the accounts and ticketing.”

Ticketing? For what?

“Carnival things. Hand stamps, ride tickets, that kind of stuff.”

“Wait, it’s a carnival?” Ned interrupted.

Matt shrugged.

“It’s a whole deal,” he said. “The sisters work for ages to put it on every year. My dad used to be really into it. Our church has been partnering more lately to keep it going. Hence the puppies.”

He seemed confused by the tense silence which followed.

“If we are like, the best puppy-volunteers ever, can we do some of the rides?” Peter asked on all their behalf.

Matt laughed and flicked off the light in the kitchen.

“I mean, I _guess,_ ” he teased.

 

 

Foggy had very obviously been unwillingly roped into this and Peter was delighted to find that he, pre-caffeine, was just as irritable and grumpy as Matt, pre-caffeine. Finally. Something the two of them had in common.

Matt bristled at all three of them as he made coffee at the asscrack of dawn. He bristled until Foggy came through the front door in a flannel shirt over a Columbia Alumni Association t-shirt, groaning and cursing the universe, to grumble with him.

“Don’t call Karen,” he warned when Matt started to unlock his phone to check on her. “She is disgusting and out for a jog despite this godforsaken hour.”

Matt dropped the phone on the counter and told Peter and Co. to ‘fucking eat something already, come on, daylight’s burning’ before skulking off to change out of his sweats.

 

 

There were so. Many. Puppies.

And they were all stoked to be there, wriggling and whining in their carriers. Peter was just as stoked to be there. He could barely contain himself as Matt introduced them to the SPCA team lead and asked if they could put up the AcaDec banner somewhere.

He had donned a hi-vis vest with “Clinton Church Volunteer” printed on the back from the church entrance and carried a thermos in his hand which Peter suspected they would be seeing all day.

They were allowed to put up the banner, but that only took five minutes. It took another fifteen minutes for the rest of their team to show. And then it was another thirty minutes before the puppy pen was set up and they got instructions on how to talk to the public and how to keep all their little charges in check before they received the green light to start releasing the beasts.

And then that was that.

 

 

Foggy stopped by after an hour or so to check on them. His sister Candace had apparently come to help out and, like Peter, desperately needed to touch as many puppies as possible to regain the stamina to work another hour. Foggy watched her with a raised eyebrow.

“You live in a shoebox,” he reminded her evenly as she tucked a blonde lab under one arm and a chocolate one under the other. She gave him her own puppy eyes.

“A shoebox,” he maintained.

“You know what you don’t live in?” she needled.

“Matt hates dogs.”

“A shoebox.”

He shook his head.

“Please?”

“Girl.”

“For my birthday?”

“Your birthday was four months ago.”

“They need a home, Franklin. Favorite brother.”

“I’m your only brother.”

“Mom and Dad could use a guard dog.”

“Then Mom and Dad can come pick their guard dog.”

Peter kind of admired Candace’s persistence. He did not replace the lab puppies with a boxer. Why would he do that?

Candace stared at Fogs with huge, saucer-sized eyes. Then she turned to Peter, ignoring the new pup as it tried to eat her paper bracelet.

“You are going to hold onto this friend for _five minutes_ ,” she instructed him. “I am going to get my dad. Five minutes. Five.”

“Candace,” Foggy sighed. She shoved the dog into his arms. It saw its opportunity and started licking his face. Candace vanished. Foggy watched her go and then carefully handed his wriggling burden back to Peter.

“You are going to lose this,” he instructed. “And you are going to be so busy with those kids right there, that when she comes back, you cannot talk to her.”

Yes, sir.

 

 

Matt hated the dogs; Peter could see now that now. Candace, however, did not, and she appeared to have adopted Matt as her secondary, more entertaining sibling sometime over his and Foggy’s acquaintance. In true sibling fashion, she dragged him bodily away from the ticket counter to behold, as best he could, the majesty of the scene before him.

“Hell, no.” He turned to head back to the counter.

“But Matty, he’s a boxer, like you!”

“Only room for one boxer in this place.”

“He’s all wrinkly like you, too.”

Matt’s gaping stare of supreme offense was a thing of beauty.

Candace smiled sweetly at him. He must have been able to feel it.

“I’m telling your brother.”

“I’m telling the Sister.”

“What’s she gonna do?”

“You wanna find out?”

It was like a two-man standoff, broken only by Matt’s complete refusal to believe that Candace had the nerve to follow through.

He was mistaken. But he left back for the safety of the ticket booth anyways.

Peter looked up after trading places with MJ in the napping corner and got to see through the puppy fence Matt hunched over the ticket counter under the firm gaze of Sister Maggie whose stature appeared to have no bearing whatsoever on the hold she had over him. She waved over in the puppies’ direction and the petting zoo behind it and evidently said something about respecting all God’s creatures which made Matt flatten himself even further against the table, which in turn made the immediate people in line cover their faces trying not to giggle.

Matt was then, once again, unceremoniously dragged away from the table and forcibly reintroduced to the puppies.

“They did not ask to be as they are,” Sister Maggie lectured, “Unlike certain _others_.”

Matt glared down towards her.

“I wouldn’t call it asking,” he nit-picked.

“What, your being an ass?”

Everyone in the immediate vicinity flinched at a nun cursing, but given Matt’s lack of reaction, that was normal. Sister Maggie waved Ned over and asked him to select a dog which she could inflict upon Matt. Ned scooped up a little dachshund and handed it over.

Sister Maggie didn’t seem too keen on dogs herself, but she powered through that to place it firmly in Matt’s arms. He immediately started hunching over in disgust.

Sister Maggie decided that that was a fluke and that they had thirty puppies to get through and by God, one of them was going to make Matt change his mind.

He was resolute. She was equally resolute.

It was charming to watch her try. And it was somewhat curious that Matt endured this for so long.

 

 

“Hey Fogs,” Peter needled at one of the volunteer picnic tables in the back corner of the playground during his lunch break, “What’s the deal with Matt and the Sister? He doesn’t let anyone else talk to him like that.”

Foggy, liberated from his volunteer vest and in a much better mood because of it, cocked his head and glanced between Peter, MJ, and Ned.

“It’s not really my place to say,” he finally decided.

“It’s a secret?” MJ translated.

He scowled at her for having broken their office code.

“It’s a secret.”

“Is she his cousin?”

He huffed in amusement.

“No.”

“Favorite teacher?”

“No.”

“Foster-mom-cum-nun?”

Fogs blinked a little and frowned.

“If anything, it’s the other way around,” he relented.

“Nun-cum-foster-mom?” MJ tried.

“Something like that.”

MJ had probably picked all her own baby teeth out with that propensity for niggling.

“Is she his mom-mom?” she tried after a few beats of intense focus.

Foggy flinched and then looked at his watch.

“Wow, would you look at the time—”

“Holy shit,” MJ gasped, taken off guard for actually having hit the mark.

Yeah, no, for real. Holy shit. Peter 100% agreed.

“We are in—uh. _By_ a church,” Foggy admonished overzealously.

“She’s his mom?? Like, how does a nun become a mom?”

Foggy shushed her firmly.

“We are not talking about this, we have never talked about this, we will never talk about this again, and most importantly, we are never, never, _never_ telling Matt that you know anything about anything. Yes?”

MJ stared at him.

“Okay, but only if you give us the dirt,” she negotiated. Foggy scoffed.

“How about no?”

“How about I ask Sister Maggie why she left her own son in an orphanage? The same orphanage she’s worked at for two billion years? Is that nepotism or something? Or is this another Catholic Church cover up story?”

Peter sometimes wondered if MJ was going to grow up to be good or evil or just chaotic neutral. He was leaning towards chaotic neutral.

Foggy chewed his lip for a long moment, then looked around again and sighed.

“You,” he said with a finger at MJ, “Are the bane of my existence sometimes, you understand that?”

MJ nodded hurriedly. Foggy grumbled and blustered, but ultimately gave up.

“Sister Maggie is Matt’s bio mom; she married his dad and they had him, but right after, she had some mental health stuff and didn’t feel like she could raise him or stay with Matt’s dad. So, she gave up her custody rights and returned to the church. She’d been planning on being a nun before all that, so it wasn’t like, a huge jump or anything. After Matt’s dad died, she technically didn’t have custody over him, but she did manage to get him placed temporarily in the place she worked so she could keep an eye on him.”

That.

Made sense. It didn’t sound very fun or happy for either of them, but it made sense.

“Does he know?” MJ asked quietly, and Peter felt like someone had whacked him upside the head with a  surfboard or something because he hadn’t even considered that to be an option and it was so obviously one now.

Foggy tapped the flats of his nails against the table.

“Let’s just say this is a whole new world for both of them,” he said diplomatically.

“Jesus.”

“I mean, the man does have a knack for bringing people together.”

“Foggy,” Michelle scolded, “That’s kind of horrible. And Matt’s okay with it? How is he okay with it?”

Fogs shrugged and stopped tapping his nails to pick at the tab on his soda can.

“Well, I’m pretty sure he did the five stages of grief thing over the last few months and then sucked it up because, I mean, you’ve gotta understand: Matt’s spent the last twenty years thinking he’s had nothing, no one. And yeah, that was pretty fucking horrible for him, but now he’s been presented with the opportunity to have someone. And again, yeah, it’s pretty fucked up how that happened, but it’s still better than nothing, right? So they’re trying. I’m not sure if they’re exactly on the whole ‘mom-son’ level yet, but they’re definitely on the ‘harassment is a form of affection’ level, so we’re just gonna let that happen, if you know what I mean.”

No.

But if that’s how Matt found family, then Peter was entirely happy to let it happen.

“Harassment _is_ a form of affection.”

Foggy went rigid. Matt didn’t seem too bothered behind him. He swerved around them to toss his cane onto the table before flopping onto his back across the rest of the bench that Foggy wasn’t occupying.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to tell them,” Foggy started. Matt waved him off before he could get any further.

“They were gonna work it out eventually; anyways, Sister Eunice was so mad when she finally worked it out that she had to go take a walk. And then she needed to take another one because she didn’t trust herself not to say ‘hateful things’ to another Sister.”

Yikes.

Matt ignored everyone’s shock to convince Foggy help him take off the godforsaken high-vis vest. He proceeded to throw that on the table too and repositioned himself to absorb maximum sunlight.

“It’s fine,” he said eventually to the rest of their tense silence.

“You’re not…mad?” MJ nudged a little.

Matt shrugged.

“I was. Now I’m not. It’s not her fault, she thought she was doing what was best for me and Dad. And obviously, she couldn’t have predicted what happened after that. So I’m not mad anymore.”

Matt was far more mature than Peter gave him credit for. He wasn’t sure how he would react if he found out that his own mom had been alive this whole time, standing there, just outside his reach, watching as he broke bones and struggled through every day.

“You think you can call her ‘mom?’” Ned asked, “Or is that like, against the rules of being a nun? Do you have to be ‘Sister’ when you’re a nun, even when you’re a mom?”

Matt cracked an eye in his direction in concerned confusion.

“I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t call her that, no,” he said, “We tried once but like, you know when you walk over a grave at night and your whole back spasms?”

Yeah, intimately. Peter now had the worst version of that.

“That’s how it felt calling her that. She got weirded out too, so we, uh, decided mutually not to go there.”

“Does she call you ‘son’ then?”

Matt laughed.

“She calls me my father’s bastard child and a pig-headed idiot.”

Uh. Not very nun-like.

“She means it affectionately.”

Are you sure, though, Matt?

“100%. You think _I’m_ emotionally stunted. And now, enough about me, tell me how you are going to sell Foggy’s parents a guard dog.”

 

 

May came by at the end of the day to collect Peter and to help clean up a bit, despite all the Sisters’ and partner organizers’ protests. She cooed at all the remaining puppies individually, all three of them, and then she went to go re-roll the AcaDec banner their team had apparently done a shit job rolling.

They said bye to everyone and Peter went to go find Matt to thank him for providing him with an excuse to roll around with puppies all day.

He was with Sister Maggie, totaling up ticket sales, and now that Peter knew what he did, he wasn’t too surprised to find them together. Just a little awkward. He could see it now. Matt looked a lot like her, not in his general physique—he was a pretty big guy for having such a small mama--but definitely in his face: the crow’s feet around his eyes and the curve of his top lip.

“Oh, hello,” Sister Maggie said, noticing him first. “Thanks for coming out to help us today.”

“No, thank you,” Peter said, trying not to be obvious about looking between them for similarities.

Sister Maggie caught him dead with a delicately arched eyebrow anyways.

“I am aware, Mr. Parker. Matthew told me you know about our relationship.”

Matthew.

Right.

Because she probably gave him that name.

Peter dropped his eyes.

“Sorry, I—my friends—we shouldn’t have pried.”

Sister Maggie watched him carefully and then looked up at Matt. He gave a one shouldered shrug and she gave one back.

“Kids are always hungry for information,” she said. She patted Matt’s arm and collected the bucket of tickets. “I’m going to go handle this. Thank you again for coming, Peter.”

She left them. Peter watched her go, then turned to Matt.

“If that ever happened to me, I don’t know that I could be like you,” he admitted. Matt cocked his head slowly, then sighed.

“I’ve only ever had a handful of people who tried to protect me, Peter. Sister Maggie’s been trying to a long time, it turns out. Seems kind of ungrateful to throw it back in her face again.”

“Again?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

Matt sighed.

“Yeah, again. Because I’m a fuckhead. Anyways, this isn’t a big deal. I don’t mind you knowing, just as long as you don’t tell anyone else. I’m sure you get why we don’t want to uh, broadcast the whole thing to the world. Wouldn’t be great for either of us.”

“My mom and dad left me when I was a baby,” Peter blurted out. “But they never—they never came home. And I just—if they—if one of them ever did, I don’t know that I’d be able to be so like, chill about it.”

Matt stared motionless for a long time, then dropped his shoulders to pull his volunteer vest off for the last time that day.

“I’m sorry, Peter. It’s not a great feeling.”

That’s not what he meant.

“I mean, it’s fine.”

“It’s not,” Matt countered.

“No, that’s not—I mean. I’m—” he didn’t know how to say it. “I had May and Ben, so I didn’t need anything else or anyone else, but I guess I just. I think I just.”

He didn’t know how to say it.

“Are you…happy? To know her? To have met her?”

Matt was a different person out of his suits, the collared ones and the black and the red, but his silence always felt the same. His lips curled back a little bit, like he was tasting the air while he thought. If Peter hadn’t known him as well as he did at that point, he would have thought that the curling was sneering.

“Yes,” Matt suddenly said, firmly.

“Yes?”

“Yes. I think I am. I think I needed it. Her. To know her.” He took a breath. “Peter, I’m sorry. This must feel unfair. If I had known that it would upset you, I would’ve stopped the conversation back there.”

Peter shook his head and dropped his eyes to his hands; one was trying to wring the others’ neck.

“No, it’s not that. I don’t care about that; like I said, I had May and Ben, I never needed anything else. I think I just wanted to say, if you’re happy, then I’m happy. And I’m really glad that you’re happy—to know her, I mean. ” he mumbled.

Matt’s face crumpled a little bit when Peter glanced up, but he pulled it back. He reached out and wrapped a hand around Peter’s shoulder. It was a firm grip. Not threatening though, it was soft in the middle. In the palm.

“Thanks, kid,” he said. Then paused. “You’re really something, Pete, you know that?” He huffed a laugh. “Really fuckin’ something.”

The hand at Peter’s shoulder jumped up into his hair and ruffled his whole head hard.

“Now get outta here,” Matt teased. “Or the Sisters are gonna make you mop the floors, too.”

Yes, sir.

 

 

“Wade, did you know about Double D and his mom?” he prodded a few days later, high up. Spring was coming, just a lick of heat on the wind, so far. But it was coming.

Wade, having launched his final mangled fork into some entitled rich guy’s suite for the night, started packing up his equipment. He stopped and was quiet for several, ages-long seconds.

“He told you.”

Peter hummed.

“Yeah, he told me.”

Wade pulled the extra scope off his terror device and whistled.

“Well, congrats, baby boy. You’re finally climbing that ladder, you know that?”

Peter frowned. “What ladder?”

“Trust, kiddo. He’s starting to trust you.”

“What, just now?” What had all those other weeks and months been? Some kind of test?

Wade saw his irritation and waved around another piece of the device.

“Look, Red’s trusted you, but he ain’t trust you like he trusts—I dunno, Nelson or Temple or—”

“You,” Peter realized. He felt bad immediately; he hadn’t meant to be so nasty about it. Wade made a little helpless motion with the piece in his hand.

“Well, yeah. Me. But that’s purely coincidence, we know each other biblically and all that.”

“When did he tell you?” Peter asked, trying to work through the bitterness.

Wade snapped his case shut and hiked it over his shoulder.

“Doesn’t matter. Man’s got that mom he’s always wanted. Kinda. In some weird, Catholic-orphan kind of way. Does that shit remind you of Matilda? ‘Cause that shit reminds me of fuckin’ Matilda. Except that would make Red Matilda in this situation and—actually no. Weird nerd kid with superpowers. Oh my god, Pete. Red’s been Matilda this whole time. What the fuck have we been doing? He’s got mind powers.”

Peter’s brain stopped in its tracks.

“Dude, what? No. It’s obviously more Annie than Matilda,” he said, “Red, we literally call him Red. And he’s an orphan. And all his role models are like, alcoholics. Whatever, anyways, why now? After all this time, it takes, what, some shit about both of us having dead folks for him to actually trust me? That’s not fair, I trust him. I’ve trusted him for ages now. And even if that was all it took, I told him about Ben ages ago. It doesn’t make sense.”

Wade snorted and snapped the back of Peter’s suit to get him to stand up and stop sulking.

“Pete, Red’s had the living shit kicked out of him since he was smaller than you. He’s got damn good reasons for putting up walls. Don’t be so butthurt; he’s letting you in now. Next thing you know, he’ll get real crazy and start trusting you to look after his people when he can’t. And when that day comes, child, we will either build a fucking monument or we’ll say our fuckin’ goodbyes, ‘cause it’s gonna be the second coming or the fuckin’ apocalypse.”

Wade…continued to have a way with words.

“How the hell did you two bond?” Peter demanded, then regretted immediately as Wade made a thrusting motion. “How _else_ , ya nasty?”

“Mutual dead dads and alcoholism.”

Comforting.

Those two were always so comforting.

Well, he figured, at least he was on the ladder now. Better late than never.

 

 

 


End file.
